On the Integration of Blockchain and SDN: Overview, Applications, and Future Perspectives

Blockchain (BC) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) are leading technologies which have recently found applications in several network-related scenarios and have consequently experienced a growing interest in the research community. Indeed, current networks connect a massive number of objects over the Internet and in this complex scenario, to ensure security, privacy, confidentiality, and programmability, the utilization of BC and SDN have been successfully proposed. In this work, we provide a comprehensive survey regarding these two recent research trends and review the related state-of-the-art literature. We first describe the main features of each technology and discuss their most common and used variants. Furthermore, we envision the integration of such technologies to jointly take advantage of these latter efficiently. Indeed, we consider their group-wise utilization -- named BC-SDN -- based on the need for stronger security and privacy. Additionally, we cover the application fields of these technologies both individually and combined. Finally, we discuss the open issues of reviewed research and describe potential directions for future avenues regarding the integration of BC and SDN. To summarize, the contribution of the present survey spans from an overview of the literature background on BC and SDN to the discussion of the benefits and limitations of BC-SDN integration in different fields, which also raises open challenges and possible future avenues examined herein. To the best of our knowledge, compared to existing surveys, this is the first work that analyzes the aforementioned aspects in light of a broad BC-SDN integration, with a specific focus on security and privacy issues in actual utilization scenarios.Comment: 42 pages, 14 figures, to be published in Journal of Network and Systems Management - Special Issue on Blockchains and Distributed Ledgers in Network and Service Managemen

Enhancing Data Security for Cloud Computing Applications through Distributed Blockchain-based SDN Architecture in IoT Networks

Blockchain (BC) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) are some of the most prominent emerging technologies in recent research. These technologies provide security, integrity, as well as confidentiality in their respective applications. Cloud computing has also been a popular comprehensive technology for several years. Confidential information is often shared with the cloud infrastructure to give customers access to remote resources, such as computation and storage operations. However, cloud computing also presents substantial security threats, issues, and challenges. Therefore, to overcome these difficulties, we propose integrating Blockchain and SDN in the cloud computing platform. In this research, we introduce the architecture to better secure clouds. Moreover, we leverage a distributed Blockchain approach to convey security, confidentiality, privacy, integrity, adaptability, and scalability in the proposed architecture. BC provides a distributed or decentralized and efficient environment for users. Also, we present an SDN approach to improving the reliability, stability, and load balancing capabilities of the cloud infrastructure. Finally, we provide an experimental evaluation of the performance of our SDN and BC-based implementation using different parameters, also monitoring some attacks in the system and proving its efficacy.Comment: 12 Pages 16 Figures 3 Table

DistB-SDoIndustry: Enhancing security in industry 4.0 services based on distributed blockchain through software defined networking-IoT enabled architecture

The concept of Industry 4.0 is a newly emerging focus of research throughout the world. However, it has lots of challenges to control data, and it can be addressed with various technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Software Defined Networking (SDN), and Blockchain (BC) for managing data securely. Further, the complexity of sensors, appliances, sensor networks connecting to the internet and the model of Industry 4.0 has created the challenge of designing systems, infrastructure and smart applications capable of continuously analyzing the data produced. Regarding these, the authors present a distributed Blockchain-based security to industry 4.0 applications with SDN-IoT enabled environment. Where the Blockchain can be capable of leading the robust, privacy and confidentiality to our desired system. In addition, the SDN-IoT incorporates the different services of industry 4.0 with more security as well as flexibility. Furthermore, the authors offer an excellent combination among the technologies like IoT, SDN and Blockchain to improve the security and privacy of Industry 4.0 services properly. Finally, the authors evaluate performance and security in a variety of ways in the presented architecture.</p

Impacts of blockchain in software-defined Internet of Things ecosystem with Network Function Virtualization for smart applications: Present perspectives and future directions

As an emerging technology, blockchain (BC) has been playing a promising role in today's software-defined networking (SDN)-enabled Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Because of the salient feature of the network function virtualization (NFV) techniques, SDN can ensure an IoT system runs efficiently and smoothly in a cloud-driven ecosystem. When cloud-enabled systems encounter immense security and operational challenges caused mainly by third-party dependency, large-scale data communication, and maintenance, BC offers effective and robust data transfer solutions without incorporating intermediaries over the distributed network. With the increased SDN-BC convergence in the IoT domain, the underlying challenges and perspectives deserve proper attention methodically and structurally. From the motivation of addressing such issues, this study provides necessary insights to combine those for successful plug-and-play. Therefore, the study includes purposefully investigating current state-of-the-art to extract the research trends, future directions, and perspectives in this domain. This study provides a comprehensive survey of IoT, SDN, NFV, and BC-enabled emerging technologies. More importantly, the authors intelligently integrated the four different technologies—IoT, SDN, BC, and NFV based on characteristics, scopes, challenges, taxonomies, and tables in numerous areas. Initially, the authors introduce the SDN-IoT ecosystem in brief and address the features and applications. We took a close look at the SDN's overall taxonomy based on security, environment, scopes, and challenges. We also briefly describe the integration of SDN-IoT with the NFV ecosystems. Moreover, we review the prospect of BC technology from security perspectives, its extent, challenges of practical implementation, and the possible integration of IoT regarding smart applications. Finally, this study highlights several future directions based on these technologies.</p

SDN–IoT empowered intelligent framework for industry 4.0 applications during COVID-19 pandemic

The industrial ecosystem has been unprecedentedly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic because of its immense contact restrictions. Therefore, the manufacturing and socio-economic operations that require human involvement have significantly intervened since the beginning of the outbreak. As experienced, the social-distancing lesson in the potential new-normal world seems to force stakeholders to encourage the deployment of contactless Industry 4.0 architecture. Thus, human-less or less-human operations to keep these IoT-enabled ecosystems running without interruptions have motivated us to design and demonstrate an intelligent automated framework. In this research, we have proposed “EdgeSDN-I4COVID” architecture for intelligent and efficient management during COVID-19 of the smart industry considering the IoT networks. Moreover, the article presents the SDN-enabled layer, such as data, control, and application, to effectively and automatically monitor the IoT data from a remote location. In addition, the proposed convergence between SDN and NFV provides an efficient control mechanism for managing the IoT sensor data. Besides, it offers robust data integration on the surface and the devices required for Industry 4.0 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the article justified the above contributions through particular performance evaluations upon appropriate simulation setup and environment.</p